ROLFE, Frederick.
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole: A Romance of Modern Venice.
London: Cassell & Co., 1934.
$125.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-153050
+$500
First Edition of Frederick Rolfe's The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole
First edition of Frederick Rolfe's posthumously published autobiographical novel, a caustic and lyrical romance of Venice by the eccentric writer known as Baron Corvo, appearing more than twenty years after his death and in the same year as A.J.A. Symons's celebrated life of him. Octavo, original cloth with gilt titles to the spine, top stain blue. Very good in the original dust jacket in good condition. Introduction by A.J.A. Symons.
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole was written by Frederick Rolfe (1860-1913) during his final impoverished years in Venice and published for the first time in 1934, more than two decades after his death. A thinly veiled autobiographical romance, it follows Nicholas Crabbe, a stand-in for Rolfe, through the canals and society of Venice, blending bitter satire against the author's real-life enemies with passages of extraordinary descriptive beauty. Rolfe, who styled himself Baron Corvo and is best known for the fantasy Hadrian the Seventh, became a cult figure after A.J.A. Symons's The Quest for Corvo (1934), which appeared the same year and helped bring this strange late work before the public.
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole: A Romance of Modern Venice.
$125.00
In Stock